When it comes time to renovate a hotel, guestrooms are always top of mind, but should they be? Guestroom updates attract the lion’s share of attention because they are the primary revenue driver behind any hotel’s success. But a hotel’s public areas can affect its curb appeal, public perception and overall guest experience.
That's why it's important to pay more attention to your update strategy for your hotel's public areas, including how the space will look before, during and after any construction takes place.
While guestroom renovations can displace hotel booking revenue, poor planning can mean that even temporary disruptions to your public spaces could negatively affect long-term bookings and sour the guest experience. To overcome these challenges, operators should look up the chain scale to see how other hotels are managing these challenges.
Four-and five-star hotels typically consider the impact of their public space’s appearance as a primary driver of guest satisfaction, and take steps to protect their reputation during renovations. While properties in other chain scales may struggle to fully emulate this strategy, there are still several elements worth borrowing to elevate your hotel’s public-space renovations.
Long-term planning
Start by articulating realistic time frames for every aspect of your public space renovation. The visual aesthetic of the hotel lobby sets the tone for a guest’s stay as well as the type of hospitality employees provide. However, ballrooms and meeting spaces carry additional requirements. Operators want to understand the scheduling expectations for each of these spaces well in advance and work around them to avoid negatively affecting a hotel’s revenue.
These challenges are exacerbated in wedding and resort destinations. These properties not only have huge spaces that often need significant refreshes all at once, their operating revenue is also heavily dependent on continued bookings with few disruptions. As such, wedding and destination resorts must plan one to two years in advance to effectively manage any renovations without losing opportunities during peak business season.
The best way hotels can adapt to these needs is to work with a development partner who understands each of these pressures and how to accommodate them. They require coordination with the hotel’s asset manager, general manager and often the food & beverage director to stay one step ahead of evolving schedules.
Visual consistency as an ethos
Once you identify a renovation schedule that benefits operators and developers, should consider the impact of the renovation on hotel operations and how to best direct traffic and flow through lobbies and other areas during construction. Hotel leaders should work with development partners to identify where the front desk can be relocated, for example. The front desk must remain centrally located and comfortable enough to accommodate workers and guests in the event of unexpected extensions. While a simple table and some chairs may seem like a stopgap for (what operators hope is) a brief update, guests will remember it for all the wrong reasons.
Upscale and luxury properties also typically work with development partners to create partitions with some aesthetic flair to match the hotel’s design, or even showcase imagery teasing the space's future design. These partitions can help guests and team members avoid feeling claustrophobic during the most intense periods of construction while building anticipation for the future product. Operators should work with their partners to identify a clear space for guests and workers to congregate throughout the renovation to help position partitions to the best effect.
It’s important for hoteliers across all chain scales to consider the impact of their renovations on guests. Successful renovation strategies can help maintain worker morale and maintain guest satisfaction when they are most fragile. With the right partners, updating your hotel can be the reawakening everyone wants it to be.
Brad Czechowski is a project executive and partner at H-CPM, a construction project management firm specializing in property acquisition due diligence, asset management of hotel renovations, repositioning and new construction projects.
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